Microsoft: Employee Relations - Case Study Example

Microsoft: Employee relations: Introduction Organisations that are interested in growth and profits must establish employee relationships, the building of this relationships have various advantages, they include, employees productivity increases as employers treat their employees fairly and properly1, increased ethical behaviour help employees realise higher compensations and finally ethically appropriate behaviour provide an intrinsic sense of self satisfaction.2 Microsoft is the leading computer software company which was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. In recent years Microsoft has grown from 15 workers to over 39,000 employees. The company is run by a board of directors and within the board there are five committees and they include: The audit committee- it is responsible for accounting issues in the company and also reporting the accounts and reports to the share holder. The compensation committee- it is responsible for compensation to the company's employees. The finance committee- this committee is responsible for finance issues such as acquisitions and mergers. Governance and nomination committee- this committee handles corporation issues including the nomination of the board. Antitrust compliance committee- it is responsible for preventing the company from violating antitrust laws. 3 The company also has an executive team that makes sure that the employees understand the business culture of the company; the corporate staff council is responsible for maintaining and improving corporate policies within the company. Employee relations: The Microsoft Company maintains employee relations through its properly set organisation structure and also through its policies, in the year 2005 it was rated as the leading organisation in human rights campaign; it also participated in the antidiscrimination policy of the year 2005. The existence of the compensation committee in the organisation shows that the company does awards its employees, awards are used by a company to motivate workers to promote effectiveness and innovation, compensation also promotes competition in an organisation where employees who have done their duties well are awarded. The company also promotes employee relations whereby it provides an opportunity for employee growth; most employees want to meet the expectations of a job and further want to meet new challenges, develop new skills and also to grow professionally. Therefore the company offers courses to its employees and also offer financial support to employees who seek to gain skills from other institutions. The Microsoft Company also recognises achievement by employees through job promotions and salary raise; they also reward their employees through granting them access to the planning process, offering them new leadership roles and rewarding them with special designations. The company also promotes the employee autonomy whereby the company assigning more decision making responsibility of the employee and this means that trust will be built, the company also offer training to manager that models their skills and finally making a flexible time schedule in a way that employees have time for their families or personal responsibility and therefore employee autonomy is achieved. The company also hires people with disabilities and this shows the companies concern to its employees and the disabled in the community, this helps the company develop products usable by all and also helps build trust and strong relations with the employees. Through employment of people with disability the company builds a good working environment, they provide the disabled with accommodation when they start their employment and throughout their employment the company ensures that they have everything they need to make them equal to the others.4 The company employs people with disabilities in different positions and in different levels throughout the company, they have employee resource groups known as diversity advisement council who are employees with visual impairments, people with attention deficit disorder and a group with people who are deaf or hearing difficulties. The company is known for its internal employee culture and an example is the principle of eat your own dog food, this principle describe the using of their latest technology in their work place as a way to test it in the real world, therefore workers have the opportunity to use the latest developed technology and therefore work relations are improved. It assigns a private closed office to every developer and key decision makers are mostly developers or former developers. Therefore developers are referred to as the stars of the company in the same way IBM considers its sales team as the stars of the company, through the assigning a private office to a developer shows that they value their workers and this will help promote the relation that exist, the decision makers who were former developers or are current developers shows that the companies decision making is made by its employees and therefore a strong relationship exist within the company. The company hosts the Microsoft puzzle hunt, the annual puzzle game is hosted every year for fun at the Redmond campus; this is usually a live puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles.5 Microsoft launched a community site entitled channel 9 for its employees and users, this site provides a modern feature such as the internet, also it launched another community site that provides daily video cast and other services to its employees and the community, this sites definitely improves the relationship between the company and its employees and its customers.6 Microsoft also hires foreign workers as well as domestic ones, the hiring of foreign workers shows that the company is does not practice discriminatory acts against foreigners, as a result of this the company enjoys good relation. the company also fights for foreign employees visas known as H1B visas which allows united states companies to employ foreign workers, this visas makes it difficult for the company to employ foreign workers and according to bill gate on the visas he says that he would definitely get lid of them.7 Microsoft develops workplace teams consisting of a number of individuals who are allocated a private office; this creates an opportunity for members to build stronger relationships with each other, this teams are designed to improve efficiency of a group in which every member works to achieve results, identifies problems and therefore corrective action is undertaken and finally the team provides an opportunity to analyse the strength and weaknesses of a company. The provision of dignified and meaningful workers within the company helps the company improve its relationships, treating of workers humanely rather than mechanically helps the company achieve its objectives where workers are motivated and therefore develop healthy relations that will oversee the success of the company.8 The company also provides fringe benefits for employees and this also helps build strong and healthy relationships between the workers and the managers, wages and other benefits are paid on time, negotiations for higher salaries and benefits are achieved within the organisation and not through trade unions. Conclusion: Microsoft Corporation enjoys good relations formulated and this helps in motivating workers, they mostly compensate workers for a job well done and also promote those whose role is well played, clear career growth also encourage the formation of good working environment. They hire foreign and workers with disability and this shows that they do not practice discrimination in their company, the disabled include those with problems with hearing, sight and physically disabled, they make sure that the disabled workers have equal opportunities as those who are physically fit. If both the management and the workers of a company are concerned with their own self interest then the company will not arrive at its most optimal position but when both subscribe to a mutually higher value system then the more quickly it reaches a mutually maximising payoff.9 References: Bhide A. and Stevenson H (1990) Why Be Honest if it doesn't Pay Harvard Business Review 68, 121-129 Hack man Richard J. and Edward E (1971) Employee Reactions to Job Characteristics, Journal of Applied Psychology 55, 259-286. McGregor, Douglas (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise McGraw Hill, New York. Microsoft website (2006) retrieved on 18th Dec available at www.microsoft.com US department of labour: employment relationship (2006), retrieved on 19th Dec available at www.dol.gov Wikipedia the free encyclopaedia: labour relations (2006) retrieved on 19th Dec available at www.en.wikipedia.org Read More